Discussion Post 8

For your initial post (Due by Jan 31 Saturday 11:59p):

• What is the importance of Osorio’s installation title En la barbera no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop)?
• Explain the representation of Edwards’ ‘Some Bright Morning.’
• Why do you think Rosler parodied a cooking show?
• Do you believe assimilation is a good or bad thing? Reference Boarding School Portraits of Tom Torlino.
• Compare and contrast Ch. 1 and Ch. 19 from American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity in 200 or more words. (Think about the era and the type of work presented)

Reading:

American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity

Please read Chapter 1 and Chapter 19 of American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity.

Chapter 1: pg. 5

Chapter 19: pg. 623

Some Bright Morning

Melvin Edwards, Some Bright Morning
by SUNANDA K. SANYAL

Melvin Edwards, Some Bright Morning, 1963, welded steel, 36 x 23 x 13 cm (The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; photo: Tim Nighswander/IMAGING4ART) Melvin Edwards

NAILS, CHAINS, AND BOLTS

Displayed on the wall at eye-level, this abstract sculpture appears to change shape from different vantage points. From the front, it looks like a shallow, dense structure of welded pieces of metal. Moving slightly to the right, however, one notices depth: the circular base holds a hollow container that spews out the metal bits. Two sharp triangular shapes, one bigger than the other, jut out of the lower rim of the container like the hands of a clock, both pointing diagonally to the lower left. A bar resembling a lever emerges from the lower right corner, also facing down. The largest bar, when viewed from the right, appears to be a hammer that projects to the upper left. It reaches out the farthest, with a chain fragment attached to its head. Metal chunks mark the welded spots, including a lump at the tip of the dangling chain, and underscore the rugged character of the piece. The shadows, which look different with shifts in the viewers position, actively contribute to the appeal of the sculpture by echoing the irregularity of its contour.

Melvin Edwards, Some Bright Morning, 1963, welded steel, 36 x 23 x 13 cm (The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; photo: Sunanda K. Sanyal) Melvin Edwards

The wall-piece, Some Bright Morning, the first in a long series of relief sculptures known as Lynch Fragments, was made by Melvin Edwards in 1963. Edwards was born in Houston in 1937. The Lynch Fragments series began early in his careerin fact while he was a student at the University of Southern California.

Beginning in the 1880s, lynchingthe public torture, mutilation, and murder most commonly of a Black person by a white mob for a perceived infraction of southern social codesbecame an insidious tool of white supremacy in the American south. Between 1915 and the 1960s, thousands of Black individualsmen, women, and childrenwere lynched across the southern United States, making it one of the darkest chapters of American history. [1] Edwardss first-hand experience of racism while growing up in Houston contributed to his acute political awareness and his involvement in the civil rights movement. One case of lynching that deeply affected him was the gruesome murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, the year Edwards entered college. Till was four years younger than him, and had been abducted, tortured, and lynched after being accused of offending a white woman.

Kitchen

Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen
by DR. EMILY ELIZABETH GOODMAN

ABSURDIST COOKING

There is something about cooking shows that makes them comforting to watch. Perhaps, its the calm of the television kitchen setone without the clamor and clang of family or friends anxiously awaiting whatever is being preparedor the simplification of a complex recipe into clear and discrete steps, ones that you too can easily complete. Or, maybe, its just the pleasure of seeing a perfectly composed dish being served at the end. No matter what, cooking shows are satisfyingly calming television.

But in 1975, Martha Rosler created her own version of the television cooking show, one that sought to unsettle and disturb her audiences, to jolt them awake and make them take a different kind of action far from the stove. The oscillation between Roslers deadpan naming of each kitchen implement and the rage expressed in its demonstration unsettles the presumption of cooking as a calm activity done as a form of caretaking, especially when performed by women in the context of the home. Instead of inspiring her audience to cook, Rosler used her piece to critique the relationship between cooking and womanhood. In the approximately 6-minute video, Semiotics of the Kitchen, Rosler creates a parody of a cooking demonstration modeled partly on television programs like Julia Childs The French Chef (airing 196373) and on late-night commercials for trendy kitchen gadgets. Rosler, however, lists off different cooking implements, one for almost every letter of the alphabet, portraying absurd, even violent uses for each item.

Boarding School Portraits of Tom Torlino

John Choate, Boarding School Portraits of Tom Torlino
by DR. HAYES PETER MAURO

John N. Choate, Tom Torlino [version 3], 1882 (Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center); John N. Choate, Tom Torlino [version #2], 1885 (Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center)

In these two side-by-side photographs we are presented with two faces. At first glance, the faces seem to have different appearances and identities. The first portrait, made in 1882, depicts a man named Tom Torlino. Torlino, a Native American, was a member of the Navajo, an Indigenous people native to the southwestern United States. He was also a student at the famous Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Carlisle was a federally funded boarding school dedicated to the assimilation of Native American youths in an effort to make them enculturated as Americanthat is, in accordance with cultural attributes common to middle-class Anglo-Americans of the time. With this mission in mind, Torlinos appearance in the first image reveals very specific information about his perceived identity. He wears Indigenous clothing, jewelry, a long shock of dark hair, and has bronzed skin. In contrast, the second photograph, made three years later following his matriculation at the school, we see a nearly unrecognizable Torlino. His appearance mimics that of the aforementioned middle-class Anglo-American man of the late 19th century: short-cropped hair, a respectable three-piece suit, no jewelry, and lighter skin. On closer inspection therefore, the two photographs represent the same individual, photographed before and after his arrival, matriculation, and Americanization at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Torlino was photographed in both instances by John Choate, a commercial studio photographer in Carlisle, who was hired by the Carlisle School administration to photograph some of its students.

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